FYI: raising people from the dead.
In Africa, if someone is unconscious, he is often seen to be “dead”, so when he wakes up, he might be seen as coming back from the dead.
since they bury folks quickly (as do Muslims) because of the heat, one wonders if stories of Zombies etc. are simply from such premature burials, and that those who are “risen from the dead” are similarly not really dead.
One of our American teachers in Africa was a brittle diabetic who warned his student that if they found him “dead” to call the doctor or give him sugar.
And remember all those stories of ‘premature burials” in history? One reason folks are embalmed is that you are sure they are dead.
Or you could simply wait a couple days until they started to rot.
And that was why Jesus, when he raised Lazerus, waited three days until even Mary objected to opening the tomb because of the smell ...if he had done it right away, folks would have merely said Lazarus was not really dead.
RE: And that was why Jesus, when he raised Lazerus, waited three days until even Mary objected to opening the tomb because of the smell ...
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There were two other recorded instances of Jesus performing the miracle of resurrecting the dead (if we don’t count His own ).
The first was the funeral at Nain which was mentioned specifically only once in The Bible, however it involved a major event.
It was at Nain that the first-recorded miracle of Jesus Christ raising the dead occurred, the awakening of a widow’s only son while he was being carried to his grave - a very fortuitously-timed funeral procession that ended with the cancellation of the funeral.
The other one was the raising of the daughter of Jairus. Jesus said that she was “sleeping” when others were certain that she was dead.
In these different cases, one was certain to be dead (Nain) because a funeral was already under way. The other one, skeptics might have room to dispute.